A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(37)

“You may want to watch your tongue,” King Ravenwood drawled. “Commander Griffin can be a little sensitive about name-calling.”

Commander?

The man looked awfully young to be the commander of the Onyx Army. I understood a young King like Ravenwood, likely twenty-five or twenty-six. Royalty had no control over when their parents passed, leaving the crown to them.

But Commander Griffin looked to be about the King’s age. I wondered how he had risen within the ranks so quickly.

The man in question rolled his eyes but kept his stance next to the king, watching me as if I were a threat. The thought made me smirk.

“Something funny to you, bird?”

“Not in the slightest,” I said, schooling my face. “If anything, the mood seems quite… somber.”

The king rolled up the ornate sleeves of his black shirt and crossed an ankle over his knee. His forearms were golden from sun and corded with lean muscle as they rested on either side of him.

“If you must know, it’s been a horrible fucking day.”

“Tragic,” I mused. Not rude, but not… polite either.

His answering smile was feral, and the wooden arms of his throne groaned beneath his grip. When had I become so bold?

“So easy for you to mock, isn’t it? When you know absolutely nothing about what is going on around you. When you have so little awareness of the sacrifices kings and queens have to make for their subjects, the lives lost, the choices that can’t be reversed.”

I tried not to scoff as anger built inside me. He was waging a war on one of the feeblest kingdoms in all of Evendell. He was a bully, not a martyr.

“I struggle to find sympathy,” I admitted through clenched teeth. I needed to leave this room before I said something I regretted.

But the king’s expression only intensified. Simmered under thick, furrowed brows.

“You have no idea how dangerous things are becoming. How precarious the fate is of every single person that you know. That you’ve ever met. That you love.”

I scowled at his attempts to scare me, but couldn’t stop the shiver that slipped down my spine.

“So tell me,” I said. “What’s really at stake for you, King Ravenwood? Or are you scared that I might know the truth? That the only thing which matters to you is your own greed?”

His face hardened into a mask of cruel calm and he stood, stalking closer.

I fought the urge to flinch as his face drew near my own and he murmured in my ear. “Firstly, you may call me Kane. King Ravenwood is a little formal from someone I’ve made blush as many times as you.”

Punishing embarrassment burned my cheeks. The guards behind the king shifted behind him. I opened my mouth to protest his outrageous claim, but he continued. “Secondly, Arwen, having only lived a ‘tiny, suffocatingly safe life’ for twenty years, never having seen anything, been anywhere, felt any man…what could you possibly know at all?”

Without a second thought, I reared back and the flat of my palm connected with his smug, male face.

I waited in still silence for his anger. His fury.

But King Ravenwood had the audacity to look oddly pleased, a strange smile spreading across his face.

As soon as the stark noise had resonated through the room, Commander Griffin was behind me and had my arms in a vise grip.

A wave of panic crashed inside my chest and my heart slammed against my throat.

I yanked away in earnest, but the commander was absurdly strong and pulled me backward. His rough hands dug into my skin.

“Unhand her,” the King snapped, rubbing his jaw and turning back to his throne. “She’s nothing more than a nuisance.”

His words stung. I hoped the slap had too. How dare he throw my own words back at me? Words I had shared with him in confidence, when I had thought he was someone else. It was a low blow, aimed to elicit a response from me.

The commander did as he was told and let me go without another word.

“Can I leave?” I asked the king, trying not to sound like Leigh when she wanted to be excused from supper.

“By all means,” the King said and gestured toward the door.

I raced back to my bedroom in the servants’ quarters, shame and rage warring inside of me. I couldn’t believe I had stooped to his level. Crawling under a woven blanket, the firm mattress dipped slightly under my sore limbs. The day had started so promisingly, with Dagan, and Mari, and my new outlook. The first ray of light in a never-ending chasm of darkness that had enveloped my life.

And now I just wanted it all to be over. Again.

Try as I might to fight it, the king’s words had struck a chord of shame in me so sensitive, so personal, it had felt almost invasive. Like he could see right through me and had reached inside my hollow rib cage to fish around for the thoughts I had hidden in the deepest corners of my heart.

I had started to resent my home in Abbington. All the ways my life there had underserved me. And I still hated Shadowhold, even more now that I knew I’d likely be here forever. It didn’t leave many options for anywhere I truly belonged. Somehow, despite the many long, empty days of my childhood, or the recent nights spent in a leaky, stone cell, I had never felt more alone.





TEN


Dear Mother, Leigh, and Ryder,

If you are receiving this letter it means you are finally somewhere safe, and maybe warm? Surrounded by exotic foods and fruits? Or is that just my grumbling stomach talking? I wish we could be together, but just know I’m taken care of in Onyx. It’s a long story that I hope to tell you all in person one day. In the meantime, please use this coin to help build your new lives. Knowing Ryder, half the sack he stole is likely gone already. Leigh, don’t let all this change frighten you. I know that leaving Abbington was hard, but as long as you are with Ryder and Mother, you are still home. Mother, I am searching this new kingdom for any information on your illness that I can find. Don’t lose hope! And Ryder, please take care of them. They need you.